Wednesday, August 26, 2015

I’ve read a
thoroughly generous review of the book I co-wrote with Tony Gurr, Adaptation and Learning: New Frontiers
(2013) by Dennis Cutchins, published in the latest issue of Literature/ Film Quarterly. Describing it as “as different from any other
book on adaptation studies you have ever read,” he describes how we adopted a
broad conception of adaptation as “a time-honored survival and educational
strategy […] a kind of master narrative for some of the most important human
activities.” On the other hand, he
believes that we should have spent more time developing the connection between
adaptation as a media process/product and adaptation as psychological
development (or “survival skill,” as he calls it). I’d love to have known more about why he felt
that his first impression of the book “was not positive” (Literature/ Film Quarterly 43.3 (2015): 233-5).

Cutchins’s
comments set me thinking; how could that connection between the two
constructions of adaptation be reinforced?
We could argue that the media/process product known as adaptation
represents the result of creative endeavors by several artists – actors,
directors, producers, screenwriters – all of whom have exercised the power to
adapt as a survival skill (if they didn’t, then they would lose their
jobs). Hence the finished product
comprises a palimpsest of several adaptations, each one produced by an individual
artist and all of them reshaped into a coherent whole.

Yet perhaps there
is another way of addressing this issue.
I’ve just finished Edward Dwight Easty’s primer on Method Acting. Published as long ago as 1989, it is a primer
designed to introduce learners to the theory and practice of an art inspired by
Konstantin Stanislavsky, and disseminated throughout American theater culture
by Lee Strasberg. Some actors positively
recoiled at its theories – especially Britons brought up in a more pragmatic
construction of training – but the Method has inspired many performers, notably
Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey and (for older readers) Marlon Brando and James
Dean.

Reading through
the book, I was struck by the way in which Easty insists on actors being
totally involved psychologically in the creation of a role. Until they have learned to inhabit it, and
understand the characters’ motivations, then they will never give convincing
characterizations. Actors have to become
sensitive to the world around them; to understand the behavior of people they
encounter, both on and off the stage, as well as their own reactions, and use
that experience as the raw material for their performances. As they act, either on stage or in front of
the movie camera, their performances change all the time in response to
external stimuli – the other actors’ reactions, the placement of props – as well
as their innermost feelings. Hence no
two performances can ever be the same.

While watching a
Method actor at work on screen – for example, Brando – we can see a controlling
intelligence at work. He inhabits his
characters; every moment he occupies the screen assumes significance as a means
of understanding how he feels and reacts.
In a sense his performance resembles a musical score, with the “notes”
suggested both by the way he speaks and moves.
In other words, we watch him adapt
to different situations, in order to survive and/or negotiate them.

This experience
might offer a way to answer Cutchins’s query.
Watching a finished adaptation (a media product, if you like) is seldom
a dispassionate experience. Brando, Dean
or Spacey’s performances engage us at a subliminal as well as a rational level
(otherwise, why should so many fans have wanted to reproduce their mannerisms
off screen?). They offer us examples of
how to adapt to different situations that we can use to determine our future
lives outside the theater. The intensity
of the actors’ characterizations offer us examples of adaptation in action, as
well as showing how texts are transformed through use of paralinguistic as well
as sonic abilities.

This experience
should remind us that the art of screen adaptation is only partially to do with textual transformation. We have to bear in mind that there are other
aspects of an adaptation to consider, especially in terms of the actors’
performances. I engaged with this issue
in a recent piece on David Rabe’s Hurlyburly
(1999), published in American Drama on
Screen (2014), but overlooked the psychological consequences of the
performances. We can only understand
precisely what processes were involved in adapting Rabe’s text to the screen,
and how they were developed by the cast (including Spacey and Sean Penn), if we
understand the ways in which human beings adapt to experiences. The actor rehearses the kind of processes we
engage in every day. To sum up my
argument in a phrase, we learn more about what is involved in adaptation as a
psychological by watching actors adapt in a mediatic adaptation.

I realize that I
might be playing with semantics here, but this kind of approach is precisely
what is being employed – to great advantage, it must be said – by our
colleagues in Fan Studies.Perhaps we
ought to propose future collaborations in order to share our mutual insights.

Friday, August 21, 2015

I’ve just read
Thomas Leitch’s very generous review of Patrick Cattrysse’s DESCRIPTIVE
ADAPTATION STUDIES published in the latest issue of ADAPTATION, where he
accuses the author of being prescriptive, as well as being in favor of a
“science-based discipline,” suggesting, perhaps, that there might be some
conclusions to which everyone, regardless of context and culture, could
subscribe. Leitch himself prefers to
describe adaptation as “endlessly debatable, revisitable, [full
of] adaptable questions, insights, and leaps of faith,” even though he
describes Cattrysse’s work as indispensable as well as infuriating. The review can be accessed at http://adaptation.oxfordjournals.org/content/current.

I don’t want to
comment on Cattrysse’s work anymore (I reviewed it for Literature/Film Quarterly and referred to it frequently in
subsequent blog-posts and essays; but what does warrant further comment is his
assertion that any discipline can be “science-based.” I wonder what that term actively signifies:
does it mean that it consists of a series of indisputable precepts beyond
negotiation? Or can adaptation studies
be reconfigured as a series of experiments designed to prove a particular
theorem? Will we be able to divide
further essays for Adaptation or Literature/Film Quarterly into sections
in a fashion similar to those used in pedagogical studies, with particular
sections devoted to “problem,” “literature review,” “application,” or
conclusion”?

Or is the entire
notion of “science-based” disciplines the invention of critics desirous to
prove that what they are doing represents an important contribution to their
specific discipline? I grew up with the
work of F. R. Leavis, a controversial figure of mid-twentieth century British
literary criticism, who insisted on critical objectivity; any poem, or other
text, could be analyzed with scientific precision, producing a series of
indisputable conclusions on content and form.
This is how I learned to “do” practical criticism; by dividing my
textual analyses into content and form, I could understand in minute detail
precisely what the writer was trying to communicate, with a depth of knowledge
denied to ordinary readers.

I’ve just finished
reading Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s satirical novel The Time Regulation Institute.
Originally published in 1961 under the Turkish title Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü,
it is a wildly funny satire of bureaucracies, where legions of people spend
most of their time doing nothing. One of
Tanpınar’s major concerns lies in emphasizing the difficulties of separating
truth from fiction: people believe what they want to with little concern for
veracity. The hero of the novel is an
illiterate with little or no self-reliance; catapulted into prominence in the
Time Regulation Institute, he has a whole past invented on his behalf that
transforms him into an ideal husband, Stakhanovite worker and intellectual
visionary. No one bothers to question
him, even when the Institute collapses.

Tanpınar’s satire encourages us to consider precisely
how and why certain discourses are perceived as authoritative in preference to
others. In the case of the novel’s hero,
it is his status at the centre of the company that renders him an authoritative
figure. The fact he is manifestly
unqualified for the task doesn’t really matter; in fact, it proves a positive
advantage based on the principle that ignorance is bliss. I don’t want to press the analogy too far,
but it seems to me that the reason why Leavis’s (or Cattrysse’s) assertions are
given credence is for a similar reason; it’s not what they are saying that’s
important, but the status of the
speakers themselves. If we accept what
they are saying, then perhaps we might share their status in the future.

What has this discussion got to do with adaptation
studies? Theoretically speaking, not
much. But what Cattrysse’s comment does
reveal is the presence of a battleground, where critics and theorists of
different disciplines are competing for recognition of the kind Leavis enjoyed
half a century ago. The stereotypical
image of scholars beavering away in their ivory towers developing ideas is
nothing but a myth; adaptation studies specialists – myself included – are as
publicity-conscious as anyone writing in the public sphere.

But perhaps this is no bad thing. The more scholars contribute interventions,
the more possibilities emerge for theoretically informed debate – not closed
debate over “scientific” principles, as Cattrysse might assume, but debate
between colleagues from various disciplinary origins as to how the discipline
might advance as a self-contained unit, or how adaptation studies might be used
to advance other disciplines. We need
authors like Tanpınar to skewer our pretensions, and thereby understand how scholarly
positions are constructed and reconstructed across cultures. I value Cattrysse’s comment, if only to show
how the critic-as-authoritative-figure is an ideological construct that needs
to be debunked.